Box Office: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters Wins Battle of "Worst" Films (Sorry, Movie 43)

Critically trashed R-rated Jeremy Renner fairytale wins weekend with $19 million Friday-Sunday; even-more critically trashed all-star comedy comes away with $5 mil

By Joal Ryan Jan 27, 2013 7:48 PMTags
Gemma Arterton, Hansel & Gretel Witch Hunters, Emma Stone, Movie 43David Appleby/Paramount Pictures; Relativity Media

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters won the showdown of critically reviled movies at the weekend box office.

The R-rated fairytale, called "the longest 90 minutes you [will] ever spend in a theater," led all films with a $19 million Friday-Sunday take, per estimates.

The A-listed-packed, R-rated comedy Movie 43, called the "worst film ever," finished back in seventh place, coming up with $5 million to match its 5 percent Rotten Tomatoes score.  

The Jason Statham-Jennifer Lopez action flick Parker, called fewer bad things than its two fellow new releases, grossed $7 million for a fifth-place debut.

Opening-weekend audiences agreed with critics in that Parker earned the best CinemaScore grade of the bunch, a B-plus. Hansel & Gretel, with a 15 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, drew a respectable B; Movie 43, a lowly D.

With a reputed $50 million budget, Hansel & Gretel had the most at stake. Its start matches the one put up on the same weekend last year by Liam Neeson's The Grey, and is a good-enough one for star Jeremy Renner as he establishes his genre cred.

Movie 43, meanwhile, which earned nearly as much money as it employed stars, who included Emma Stone, Halle Berry, Richard Gere, Kate Winslet and current Oscar nominees Hugh Jackman and Naomi Watts, was anything but a financial flop. For all its big-name actors, directors and producers, including Peter Farrelly, the film cost just $6 million to produce.

The $30 million Parker opened on par with other recent Statham films, including last year's Safe.

While the box office avoided detonating historic bombs, it didn't avoid taking a hit: Business was down nearly 25 percent from last weekend.

Outside of the Top 10, Best Picture hopeful Life of Pi quietly crossed the $100 million mark; Skyfall hit $776.5 million overseas, becoming the sixth-biggest grossing international movie of all-time. The James Bond film is at a staggering $1.1 billion worldwide.  

Here's a complete look at the weekend's top movies, per Friday-Sunday studio estimates and stats as compiled per Exhibitor Relations:

  1. Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, $19 million
  2. Mama, $12.9 million 
  3. Silver Linings Playbook, $10million
  4. Zero Dark Thirty, $9.8 million
  5. Parker, $7 million
  6. Django Unchained, $5.005 million
  7. Movie 43, $5 million
  8. Gangster Squad, $4.2 million
  9. Broken City, $4 million
  10. Les Misérables, $3.9 million